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| Romanian Jewish novelist wins top French prize
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Norman Manea
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PARIS (AFP/EJP)--- A 70-year-old Romanian Jewish novelist who lives in New York was awarded one of France’s top literary prizes on Monday.
Norman Manea won the Medicis Prize for the best non-French book for his "Hooligan's Return - A Memoir".
The book, which has been translated into more than 15 languages, tells the story of Manea's return to his homeland following the fall of communism.
Early internment
Manea was thrown into a concentration camp in Transnistria at the age of 5 in 1941 while Romania was ruled by fascists during World War II. He survived along with his whole family.
He was educated at the Institute of Civil Engineering, in Bucharest and made his debut as a writer in the 1960s Communist Romania.
He described the everyday life under the totalitarian regime and was later pushed into exile in 1986.
After spending a year in West Berlin, he arrived in the United States where he currently lives. He is a professor of literature at Bard College in New York.
Critically acclaimed
A highly cerebral writer, he has written several critically acclaimed books, such as Compulsory Happiness and The Black Envelope.
Manea is one of the most internationally famous contemporary Romanian writers, considered more popular abroad than in his native country.
Goncourt Prize for Jonathan Littell ?
The main Medicis Prize was awarded to a Tunisian-born writer and journalist, Sorj Chalandon, for his novel "La Promesse" (The Promise).
Chalandon is a veteran reporter for the French left-wing daily Liberation, and has notably written about the conflict in Northern Ireland.
Last week, the 39-year-old Jonathan Littell, an American whose French-language work "Les Bienveillantes" -- The Well-Meaning Ones -- has been the most talked about novel in France in the past month, picked up one prize awarded by the guardian of the French language, the Academie Francaise.
His book takes the form of fictional memoirs of an SS officer during World War II. Although it has received mixed reviews it has spent nine weeks on the top-10 bestseller list published by the trade review "Livres hebdo", where it remained on Monday at number two.
Littell is also on the shortlist of four favourite authors for the Goncourt Prize, the country's top literary award, which is due to be announced on 6 November.
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